Blue Sky Tuesday
by shoefiend
Summary: September 11th themed. Takes placed immediately after I 'heart' NY.


Steve Brady woke up in Miranda's bed. Pleasant thoughts ran through his head. He was a dad. He had seen his son, Brady, born the morning before, and now it was only a few hours until he would go to the hospital to pick up Miranda and the baby and take them home.

He pulled on his robe and stepped outside the hall to pick up the copy of the New York Times that he had heard hit Miranda's front door a couple of hours earlier. He heard Miranda's tabby cat, Fatty, meow. "Hey there, Fatty. Do you want some breakfast?"

Once in the kitchen, he dumped some cat food from the box on the counter into Fatty's bowl. Then he started up the coffee machine. Then he turned on the small television that Miranda kept in the kitchen.

Around noon Carrie walking down the street toward her "A Slice of New York," her favorite hole-in-the wall pizza place. It was a beautiful day. They sky was blue, and it was warm. Normally a day this fine would have provided her with a feeling of well-being. Normally, on a day this fine, as she walked down the sidewalk, she would have heard many conversations as she passed the diners sitting at the sidewalk tables at the restaurants. This day it seemed as if there were but one. On a normal day, the little shops along that street would have been bustling. Instead, the doors were locked and there hastily scribbled signed in the window announcing they would be closed for the day. This was no normal day. She had known that since she has been woken by a phone call that morning from Charlotte York telling her to turn on the television.

As she stood in line at the pizzeria, she noticed that the owner, Nick, a brusque man from the Bronx was not teasing his customers in the way he normally would. She ordered her regular: two slices of pepperoni and a medium root beer.

He asked, "Hey, did you get hold of your friend?

Carrie saw a young woman employee emerge from the store's back office. "Finally. He's fine. He was late for work this morning. He was just about to leave for work when the first plane hit."

Nick turned to Carrie. "One of her friends is a barkeep over at World Trade Center," he said by way of explanation. Then, speaking to no one in particular, he said, "He's late for work, and it saves it life."

After Carrie had finished her first slice of pizza, she wiped the grease from her fingers with a paper napkin and picked up her ringing cell phone. The caller ID said "John."

"Hey, Kid, how are you doing?"

"A little shaken up," Carrie admitted.

"I know. I just woke up an hour ago. I have been on west coast time the last couple of days, you know. I have been thinking about you. I have been thinking about New York. The city is very close to this one's heart. It always will be."

"Do you know any one who works in the Trade Center towers?"

"My friend, Jim, was supposed to be there this morning. I have tried calling him ever since I saw the news on TV. We had lunch just a few days ago. I put him in touch with some people I have done some business with before. Jim used to work under me. A couple of years ago he went out on his own and started his own ad agency. He was telling me that he had some new clients and that his business going well. He and his wife are expecting a second baby. I have tried to call him three times and I just get his voice mail."

Carrie didn't know quite what to say. She couldn't bring herself to tell Big that, if his friend had been in the Windows of the World at the time of the attack, his chances of survival were practically nil. She didn't want to sound foolishly optimistic either. She finally settled on, "I hope he's okay."

"Yeah, me too."

After she was done talking to Big, Carrie turned her attention to her remaining slice of pizza. She just wasn't hungry. She tossed the slice on the trash along with the napkins and placed the root beer mug in the plastic bin on top of the garbage can.

"Hey, was everything okay? I made that pizza myself," Nick bellowed from behind the counter.

"It was fine. I am just not as hungry as I thought I would be. Sorry."

Nick nodded his acknowledgment.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Hobbes," the nurse said as she entered the room carrying little Brady. "We have been backed up here all morning. I know that you were expecting to be discharged with your baby hours ago."

"I understand," Miranda said.

"Yeah, it's been a hard day around here. It's time we get out of your way and get this little guy home."

"I will be back right back with your discharge orders and your aftercare instructions."

Miranda looked at the sleeping woman with whom she had been sharing the hospital room. Her baby daughter had been born in the early hours of the morning. "Poor little girl, starting out her life on a day of infamy as her birthday," she thought. Then she thought how less secure the world seemed than it did when she was young. She felt an overwhelming need to make the world safer for Brady and his peers, and didn't know how.

That night Carrie carried her laptop up to the roof garden on her building. She knew that morning light would reveal a gap in the skyline. It always seemed to easy to write her column. She would write about fashion shows, parties, the men that she and the women she knew were dating. This evening, for the first time, it just didn't seem all that important.

Just twenty-four hours ago, it had seemed that Big's move to California was the biggest thing that could ever happen. She had spent most of the day before reliving their last night on the town. Now she wanted to call him and ask him if he had managed to get in touch with his friend. She felt a strange need to know.

_One of my most cherished notions is that there is a balance to the universe. Yin and Yang. For every good-bye there is a hello. I don't know this to be so: I choose to believe it. But some time something happens that threatened to put cherish notions to the test. We need to believe in order, justice. They change things so much, they demand a redefinition of normal. The breach between now and then. We need to believe. It is a security blanket.  
_


End file.
